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One if the things I don't understand is how San Francisco is the majority exposure of this problem. Apparently New York has the most homeless at a whole magnitu

One if the things I don't understand is how San Francisco is the majority exposure of this problem. Apparently New York has the most homeless at a whole magnitude more[1] than San Francisco, but there seems to be less of a focus on the problem with the homeless population there. Los Angeles as well, news tends to SF in my experiences. It's also discussed more (for instance in Sweden SF and the west coast in general gets more focus by searching t.ex. "hemlösa USA") That's not to take away from this and I hope they can do something for those folks, but it also strikes me as amazing this city in general has the largest focus and not even close to the largest homeless population. 1. https://www.statista.com/chart/6949/the-us-cities-with-the-most-homeless-people/ https://www.statista.com/chart/6949/the-us-cities-with-the-m...

lainga 8y ago
Different behaviour? More homeless per capita (how large is the NY "Continuum of Care" and how large is SF's) ? Your last sentence, by eye, would make more sense if you were comparing it to Seattle. ED: also, as your posted link says, "New York can at least claim that 65 percent of its rough sleepers are given sheltered accommodation" - what is that figure for SF?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  IIRC, California has by far the highest percentage of rough sleepers in the nation, in part due to the mild year-round temps and relatively dry weather.
- CorvusCrypto 8y ago
  Yeah this is all stuff I'd like to know. It could point to potential frameworks for solutions. Maybe they have implemented something that mitigates problems associated with homeless in SF. This is kinda where my mind is taking me with this kind of interesting deviation in exposure.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
A little context for those stats: San Francisco · Population 884,363 (2017) New York · Population 8.54 million (2016) https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-statistics-on-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-...
- CorvusCrypto 8y ago
  Dividing by each yields a higher per capita for New York still
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Please post your calculations. I imagine the per capita difference isn't huge. It's probably not "a whole magnitude more." I know a lot about homelessness. Among other things: I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy many years ago. More recently, I spent several years homeless. I still blog about it and still talk with homeless individuals regularly. Your argument doesn't look like a good faith argument to me. It looks like a case of "how to lie with statistics." That makes it difficult to engage with you.
    - CorvusCrypto 8y ago
      I understand your wariness. I am using your population numbers and dividing by the numbers in my reference. The per capita rates are: SF: 6857/884363 = 0.00775360344 NY: 78676/8540000 = 0.00921264637 The reason I said this is not to lie with statistics, but to show that when normalizing for population the rates are still worse in NY.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Thanks. It's not hugely worse. So, the reason it's a whole order of magnitude worse in absolute figures is that New York is a whole order of magnitude larger. There are probably more accurate figures in New York. California has a really high percentage of rough sleepers compared to New York, in part due to mild temps and dry weather. I have participated in a homeless program that did the annual point in time count. There are serious challenges in counting rough sleepers. You probably see a lot more undercounting of street people than of homeless people using the shelter system. So my guess is the real per capita figures are actually pretty close. San Francisco has a fairly small footprint and good public transit. It has insanely high housing costs. California has underbuilt housing for decades and has serious systemic problems in that regard. There is evidence that individuals voluntarily choose to relocate to California while homeless, in part due to the weather. There is also evidence that sometimes other states just issue them a bus ticket to California. The high cost of housing plus lovely weather contribute to California having more chronic, long term homeless. These people wind up typically being the most visibly homeless. The longer you are on the street, the harder it gets to fit in to normal society for various reasons. The figures I've seen (some linked above) suggest that California overall seems to have a lot more homeless per capita than the rest of the nation. The most destitute homeless tend to gravitate to the bigger cities because that's where soup kitchens et al are found.
burlesona 8y ago
Anecdotally, it seems that SF is one of the few places where homelessness is very concentrated among the major employment and tourist centers, so the well-off really see the homelessness up close and personal there. By comparison when I visit New York I don’t encounter much. That’s just my anecdotal experience, but if true it would explain why the problem in SF gets so much attention.
- miketery 8y ago
  It's encountered daily. Maybe if you live in one part that lacks it and stay there, then maybe, but quite unlikely especially if you take transit.
jdavis703 8y ago
NYC has a "right to shelter" due to the cold winter months. SF has no right to shelter, which means there are many more unsheltered people in SF than in NYC. In LA I suspect that due to the large geographical size, high automobile usage (whereby there's less direct interaction with people) and perhaps more draconian law enforcement, the unsheltered population is slightly less visible.
- squish78 8y ago
  I assume it's also easier to live in a car in LA than SF or NY
Kalium 8y ago
Unlike NYC, SF has a sizable problem with the sheer number of unsheltered homeless. NYC is required by a consent decree to provide shelter, and they do to a great extent. This does a lot of limit the visibility of the problems there. I think the rest of it might be the contrast. SF is seen as - sees itself as - the shining city on a hill, the city of the future, a place made of innovation and progressiveness. Where kindness and compassion flow like water.
twright0 8y ago
NYC is about an order of magnitude larger than SF in many different ways - for example, total population (8.6m vs 880k people) and area (302 vs 46 square miles). So comparing absolute number of homeless people between the two cities is not likely to be a useful thing to do. Your link does however demonstrate that NYC has a slightly higher percentage of homeless population than SF - .9% vs .7%. So I tend to agree that there's something else that contributes to it being a larger conversation in SF than NYC beyond just the number/percentage of people.
- CorvusCrypto 8y ago
  Well my hope is that something can be learned about this difference. As I said I don't want to take away from the fact it's a problem in all cities no matter how large. Rather, I want to understand what is causing differences in perception and is there a difference in regulation or response that causes this. Seems that I've seen shelter rates brought quite a bit in the last 5 minutes, and I'm currently investigating these differences. I hope homelessness gets solved for every city of course.

lainga 8y ago

Different behaviour? More homeless per capita (how large is the NY "Continuum of Care" and how large is SF's) ? Your last sentence, by eye, would make more sense if you were comparing it to Seattle. ED: also, as your posted link says, "New York can at least claim that 65 percent of its rough sleepers are given sheltered accommodation" - what is that figure for SF?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
IIRC, California has by far the highest percentage of rough sleepers in the nation, in part due to the mild year-round temps and relatively dry weather.
CorvusCrypto 8y ago
Yeah this is all stuff I'd like to know. It could point to potential frameworks for solutions. Maybe they have implemented something that mitigates problems associated with homeless in SF. This is kinda where my mind is taking me with this kind of interesting deviation in exposure.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

A little context for those stats: San Francisco · Population 884,363 (2017) New York · Population 8.54 million (2016) https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-statistics-on-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-...

CorvusCrypto 8y ago
Dividing by each yields a higher per capita for New York still
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Please post your calculations. I imagine the per capita difference isn't huge. It's probably not "a whole magnitude more." I know a lot about homelessness. Among other things: I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy many years ago. More recently, I spent several years homeless. I still blog about it and still talk with homeless individuals regularly. Your argument doesn't look like a good faith argument to me. It looks like a case of "how to lie with statistics." That makes it difficult to engage with you.
  - CorvusCrypto 8y ago
    I understand your wariness. I am using your population numbers and dividing by the numbers in my reference. The per capita rates are: SF: 6857/884363 = 0.00775360344 NY: 78676/8540000 = 0.00921264637 The reason I said this is not to lie with statistics, but to show that when normalizing for population the rates are still worse in NY.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Thanks. It's not hugely worse. So, the reason it's a whole order of magnitude worse in absolute figures is that New York is a whole order of magnitude larger. There are probably more accurate figures in New York. California has a really high percentage of rough sleepers compared to New York, in part due to mild temps and dry weather. I have participated in a homeless program that did the annual point in time count. There are serious challenges in counting rough sleepers. You probably see a lot more undercounting of street people than of homeless people using the shelter system. So my guess is the real per capita figures are actually pretty close. San Francisco has a fairly small footprint and good public transit. It has insanely high housing costs. California has underbuilt housing for decades and has serious systemic problems in that regard. There is evidence that individuals voluntarily choose to relocate to California while homeless, in part due to the weather. There is also evidence that sometimes other states just issue them a bus ticket to California. The high cost of housing plus lovely weather contribute to California having more chronic, long term homeless. These people wind up typically being the most visibly homeless. The longer you are on the street, the harder it gets to fit in to normal society for various reasons. The figures I've seen (some linked above) suggest that California overall seems to have a lot more homeless per capita than the rest of the nation. The most destitute homeless tend to gravitate to the bigger cities because that's where soup kitchens et al are found.

burlesona 8y ago

Anecdotally, it seems that SF is one of the few places where homelessness is very concentrated among the major employment and tourist centers, so the well-off really see the homelessness up close and personal there. By comparison when I visit New York I don’t encounter much. That’s just my anecdotal experience, but if true it would explain why the problem in SF gets so much attention.

miketery 8y ago
It's encountered daily. Maybe if you live in one part that lacks it and stay there, then maybe, but quite unlikely especially if you take transit.

jdavis703 8y ago

NYC has a "right to shelter" due to the cold winter months. SF has no right to shelter, which means there are many more unsheltered people in SF than in NYC. In LA I suspect that due to the large geographical size, high automobile usage (whereby there's less direct interaction with people) and perhaps more draconian law enforcement, the unsheltered population is slightly less visible.

squish78 8y ago
I assume it's also easier to live in a car in LA than SF or NY

Kalium 8y ago

Unlike NYC, SF has a sizable problem with the sheer number of unsheltered homeless. NYC is required by a consent decree to provide shelter, and they do to a great extent. This does a lot of limit the visibility of the problems there. I think the rest of it might be the contrast. SF is seen as - sees itself as - the shining city on a hill, the city of the future, a place made of innovation and progressiveness. Where kindness and compassion flow like water.

twright0 8y ago

NYC is about an order of magnitude larger than SF in many different ways - for example, total population (8.6m vs 880k people) and area (302 vs 46 square miles). So comparing absolute number of homeless people between the two cities is not likely to be a useful thing to do. Your link does however demonstrate that NYC has a slightly higher percentage of homeless population than SF - .9% vs .7%. So I tend to agree that there's something else that contributes to it being a larger conversation in SF than NYC beyond just the number/percentage of people.

CorvusCrypto 8y ago
Well my hope is that something can be learned about this difference. As I said I don't want to take away from the fact it's a problem in all cities no matter how large. Rather, I want to understand what is causing differences in perception and is there a difference in regulation or response that causes this. Seems that I've seen shelter rates brought quite a bit in the last 5 minutes, and I'm currently investigating these differences. I hope homelessness gets solved for every city of course.